In a modest triumph for academic freedom in America’s public schools, a federal court has challenged the decision of a lower court judge who had ordered Georgia schools to remove textbook stickers that called evolution “a theory, not a fact.” A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that the previous decision be vacated and the case retried.

In a modest triumph for academic freedom in America’s public schools, a federal court has challenged the decision of a lower court judge who had ordered Georgia schools to remove textbook stickers that called evolution “a theory, not a fact.” A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that the previous decision be vacated and the case retried.

The appeals court sent it back to the trial court. Jeff Selman got some new people on his legal team: Eric Rothschild and Stephen Harvey from Pepper Hamilton (the two main lawyers for the plaintiffs in the KvD case) and Richard Katskee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They asked Judge Clarence Cooper to re-open discovery in the case, since the appeals court wanted a better evidentiary record. He agreed. They then set out and got three expert witnesses for Selman: Prof. Ken Miller of Brown University (who testified in the first round of the case as a fact witness, not an expert witness), Dr. Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science Education, and Prof. Brian Alters of McGill University. Miller and Alters had been expert witnesses in the KvD trial. They prepared their expert reports. Somewhere along in there, the defense decided to throw in the towel, and the case was settled.

Thanks for the update Richard, Wesley. I am familiar with the case and Ken Miller did refer to the stickers during his talk in Ohio.

The article on the AiG website yesterday looked convincingly like a new development, which begs the question, why are AiG putting out news stories that are a year old without explaining this to their readers ?

The article on the AiG website yesterday looked convincingly like a new development, which begs the question, why are AiG putting out news stories that are a year old without explaining this to their readers ?

The date on the AiG article says "September 5, 2006", so it looks to be a bit over a year old.

Since that page apparently corresponds to an article in their print publication, "Answers Magazine", it may be the case that they are making the magazine content available online one year after subscribers get it in print form. Delayed online publication of print material is pretty common.